Videos show how Cycle Superhighway 2 could make cycling safer and more convenient

Transport for London has published a pair of videos showing how it expects people to use new cycling infrastructure on the Cycle Superhighway 2 extension that’s currently being built from Bow roundabout to Stratford High Street.

The first video (above) shows a two-stage right-turn, while the other (below) shows a cycle track bypassing a bus-stop.

Two-stage right turns and bus bypasses are solutions proposed by our Love London, Go Dutch campaign in 2012, and previously hardly seen in the capital, but these are poor implementations of those principles.

Two-stage right turn

Two-stage right-turns (or left-turns if cars drive on the right) are commonplace in continental Europe, and mean cyclists don’t have to cross one or more lanes of motor traffic to turn from a cycle track/lane on the left side of the carriageway to a street on the right.

The junction in the video is the junction between Stratford High Street and Warton Road/Rick Roberts Way in East London, which you can see on google maps is a huge space.

It’s great there’ll be segregated tracks on Stratford High Street, but Warton Road/Rick Roberts Way aren’t minor roads (which is what they look like on the video above).

North and south of Stratford High Street, these streets have been expanded recently so there are two lanes entering the junction with Stratford High Street and two going out.

There will be no separate space for cycling on these ‘side’ streets, nor separate traffic-light phases. The only cycling facilities will be Advance Stop Lines, which have limited value in protecting cyclists.

There’s also a problem with the two-stage crossing facility itself, which involves the cyclist overshooting the junction, and then turning back on themselves to enter the ASL.

This is an overly complicated arrangement, which involves the cyclist mounting a pedestrian footpath, before entering an ASL in front of a stream of motor vehicles that could move at any time.

While the cyclist has avoided having to cross streams of fast-moving traffic on Stratford High Street, other conflicts have been created.

There’s also a strong possibility that cyclists will ignore the desired manoeuvre and instead move straight to the front of the ASL without looping around on the pavement.

That manoeuvre is sometimes called the 'Copenhagen left'. LCC has proposed that a 'London right' turn be provided for in many major road junctions.

The video also shows how cyclists will be able to use the dropped kerbs between Warton Road/Rick Roberts Way and Stratford High Street to avoid being delayed when making left turns on to Stratford High Street.

LCC would like to see this type of left turn by-pass included in all segregated cycle routes.

Bus-stop bypasses

Six bus-stop bypasses will be included on the extended portion of CS2, where the cycle track will be routed around the back of the bus stop.

There's been some concern from pedestrians that these create conflict with cyclists, but there are literally thousands of these in the Netherlands, and conflicts are extremely rare.

As shown people on bikes have to turn away where the track narrows and rises to pavement level. That is designed to slow bike traffic giving more protection for pedestrians.